


Hallelujah

by katonline



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining, 6000 Years of Slow Burn, Historical References, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Missing Scene, Mutual Pining, The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 14:51:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19443679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katonline/pseuds/katonline
Summary: There's a blaze of light in every wordIt doesn't matter which you heardThe holy or the broken HallelujahYear after year, Crowley and Aziraphale realize some ineffable truths.





	Hallelujah

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written anything fandom-related in at least a decade, but the incredible wholesomeness of the Good Omens miniseries, an adaptation of my all-time favorite book and one of my OG ships, in combination with the absolute glorious explosion of the fandom and the way the cast & crew of the show has embraced that, really brought back the joy and sense of community that made me write fic in the first place. So from someone who used to write prolifically, and whose real life got in the way, thank you for being here for me to come back to, to share this joy with. Heavily inspired by all the amazing art, edits and posts on Tumblr.
> 
> This builds on the incredibly charming cold open of episode 3, and ends the night the apocalypse is thwarted.
> 
> One of my favorite songs of all time, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and all the beautiful interpretations of it, seems just perfect for the Ineffable Husbands. If you have never heard the version of Rufus Wainwright performing the song with a group of 1500+ concertgoers, please do yourself a favor and listen to it RIGHT NOW and make sure you’ve got a tissue handy.
> 
> https://youtu.be/AGRfJ6-qkr4

_Mesopotamia - the night before the Flood_

He hasn’t been able to convince him to have Her call it off.

And he hasn’t been able to have the children spared.

But at least, he can tell, the angel is as troubled as he is.

They sit across from each other, a small smoky fire in between. The bells of the herds as they settle down for the night fill the air. The humans murmur and argue and laugh and sigh all around their fire, but to Crowley it feels as though the two of them are alone under the dark, low sky.

“And you’re sure there’s nothing…?” He trails off. He doesn’t really want to hear the answer again. Not really.

“Nothing,” the soft voice is filled with resignation. The wide blue eyes reflect the flickering of the flames and the angel’s mouth is set in an emotion Crowley can't read.

“But why?”

“It’s not my place to question why,” he answers, irritatingly gentle. “You know this, Craw - er, Crowley. I’m not going around in circles with you again.”

“Someone ought to,” he mutters. He suddenly can’t stand the sight of the angel, hunched over, turning the clay teacup around and around in his fingers. Worrying it. But not _doing_ anything. Crowley stands up abruptly, dusting the sand off of his robes, his frown throwing deep shadows across his face. 

“Where are you going?”

“Away from here.”

Aziraphale’s mouth is a thin, white line in his suntanned face. “Crowley -”

But Crowley is already walking away. Angrily, he kicks a hillock of sand, scattering the grains through the gathering night. “Stay dry,” Aziraphale calls after him, worried, the wind catching the thin sound and carrying it away. Crowley pretends he doesn’t hear it at all.

He’d thought the angel was different. He saw his troubled face, the river-deep eyes as they watched the first humans trek away from the walls of Eden. He saw the whiteness of his lips, the anxiety etched between the sandy eyebrows, and despite his role in the disaster he had found himself grinning. _A kindred spirit._

But perhaps that was just one of the many, many mistakes he’s made since the Fall.

***

_Jerusalem - midnight in the Palace_

He can hear the music stopping, starting, and then a frustrated scoff as it breaks off again. He turns back to the window, watching one of the servant girls sighing in the arms of a guard. His work. Measly work. Hardly worth the effort. Better than nothing. Better than Hell. Their long shadows stretch across the tiled courtyard. 

“I don’t believe this is the sort of praise that the Almighty would find worthy,” comes the frustrated, hoarse voice of the king.

David. So hard to tempt. Crowley has tried it all - harem girl. Doe-eyed youth. Ambassador dripping in jeweled bribes. But he is just so...pious. Better to seek the low-hanging fruit: the hungry almost-thief, the trembling breath of the servant hoping for more. Fruit has always been Crowley’s specialty, after all.

“No, not at all. It’s lovely, Your Highness. Any praise from your heart...well, that’s holy work, isn’t it?” The sound of a hand sliding over another, covering it. A silence. A long, lingering sigh.

Crowley tears his eyes from the courtyard. _What in Hell’s - Heaven’s - bless it_. He slinks from his hidden perch to the door of David’s presence chamber, slightly ajar, warm lantern light pooling on the stone floor. Sidling against the carved doors, he rests the base of his skull against the wood and listens. Waits. Surely not.

But of course, it is. It seems fated that their paths keep crossing. Idly, he wonders why. His lip twists. Better him than the other twats - Gabriel. Uriel. That insufferable Sandalphon, whose ideas of righteous judgement are better suited to Hell than to the so-called Good Place.

“Do you think - if I add here -” the sounds of fingers plucking strings, two hands, four hands. A harmony. And then another silence. A shaky breath, long and grateful. So much want. 

_Bloody David,_ Crowley thinks. _Shouldn’t be surprised. After all that drama with Johnathan. Faithful brother indeed._

The disgust strikes him all at once, suddenly, an unseen adder. But it’s not the fact that David remains immune to his, Crowley’s, demonic attempts at corruption and seduction. It’s that - there’s that hot white flare of envy in his chest - well, David, and Aziraphale - _Aziraphale_ \- 

And why does he care?

And why can’t he leave?

“I think I have it,” David says finally, and plays a string of haunting notes on the lyre. Perfect, praiseworthy notes of adoration to God.

“Lovely, your Highness...David. Just lovely.”

Crowley’s eyes blaze and the strings of David’s lyre snap, popping painfully against his hands. If Aziraphale looks to see if a serpent's shadow lingers by the door - it’s too late. 

Crowley stays away from Israel until the king is dead. But he sent the girl - long black hair, long white throat. What a perfect weapon, womankind. What a satisfying tumble into sin for the perfect, pious king. Adultery, and then the wronged husband’s murder. The counselors railing against David, his children warring with each other.

But then the loss of the boy. That part pricks him, even now. She’d had another. But somehow Crowley didn’t think that could make up for the loss of the first one. Dark-eyed, like his mother. After all, Eve had wept over Abel even while Cain and Seth and the daughters lived. He knew. He had been there with her when she buried him.

It’s true, really, what he was saying to the others at his last check-in. What humans do to each other is far, far worse than anything he can dream up. And God took Her share of their flesh and their grief.

He never asks Aziraphale about his time in Jerusalem. It’s not that his curiosity doesn’t want satisfaction. It’s not that the small, hard pit of self-loathing isn’t aching to be fed - demonic insecurity that seems to grow with each passing century. It’s that for some strange reason, he can’t force the words out. They stick in his throat. The holy music, Aziraphale’s soft hand on the calloused palm of the warrior-king. He can’t ask.

So he doesn’t. 

***

_Babylon - the Palace Gardens_

The tall figure moves easily through the rows, plants brushing against his robes, dark red like the long curls cascading down his back. A light sheen of sweat stands out on his forehead. It will be another hot day. They’ve all of them been hot. When he sees him, Aziraphale forgets what exactly it is he’s been sent here for.

The fluid movements of the demon as he bends to inspect waxy emerald leaves and fiery blossoms make Aziraphale think of music. He shakes his head. What a foolish, blasphemous thought.

“Crowley?”

He tenses before he turns. Part of him wishes it was anyone else.

But of course it’s not.

“Angel,” he says. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“What on Earth are you doing?”

Crowley gestures around him. “Planting,” he says shortly. 

“Yes but - but why?”

“Favor,” he replies, stepping back, considering. The terraces are rising before him - lush, dark, pungent. A jungle in this busy city of foreign tongues. 

“A favor?” The angel scoffs. “For who?”

“King’s wife.” He grins. “It will bring people in, see? Boost up the population. Come see the wondrous gardens. Stay for a spot of sin. Tourist trap. That’s one of mine, that is.” He gleams in satisfaction. “They’re going to catch on.”

“But -” Aziraphale stops. The garden - can it really be called a garden? It’s more like a monument, a tower, a monolith - steams in the sprawling early-morning heat. _What kind of demon_ , he thinks, _builds? What kind of demon...creates? Nurtures? Grows?_ It’s too different a thought. It’s too new. And it leaves a fissure in the solid wall of Faith Aziraphale holds around his heart.

He can’t think of an answer for Crowley. There’s no plausible answer, that’s why, and besides - it’s not his place to give answers. Part of the plan, no doubt. He considers the work of the demon again. It’s hard to think of it as demon’s work. Because it’s hardly demonic. In fact, it’s downright -

“Lovely,” he finishes out loud. Crowley scowls, one eyebrow raised. “I mean it,” Aziraphale insists. Crowley looks sourly at him for a long moment before speaking.

“High praise,” the demon replies, sarcastically.

“N-no, I mean it,” Aziraphale says again, earnest, caught off guard by the naked hostility in Crowley’s eyes, and impulsively he reaches out and takes Crowley’s hand. At once the demon’s body stiffens, the easy languid grace that Aziraphale had observed dissolving in an instant. Something seems to leap up between them. Something not quite demonic, and something undivine. Unknowable. Aziraphale drops the smooth, cool fingers and snatches his hand back to his side. “It’s lovely. I’m sure the queen will be pleased.”

“It’s not for her,” Crowley says crossly. “Not really. Temptation, I told you. Sins of the city to tempt all the bumpkins who come to gawp. Tourist trap.” He abruptly wipes his hands on his robes although they’re not dirty. “Nothing to do until an order of plants comes in from the East. Supposed to be like the mountains from the wife’s home.” He swallows. “Fancy a spot of lunch? They’re building restaurants, too.”

“For the tourists, I presume.”

The demon grins. And it’s not unnerving, it’s not full of fangs or dripping venom. It’s a nice smile, actually. White and a little crooked. 

“Who else?”

“All right,” he says, surprising them both. It’s been a while since they had lunch together. And as he listens as Crowley tells him a story across the rough table, he thinks: _this one really is different._

Later, when Aziraphale is tasked with erasing all mentions of the pagan Hanging Gardens from the records of antiquity - well, it goes against the grain. He wants to object. But he must follow the orders he’s given. It’s another taste of regret. It’s bitter, not at all like the fruits laid out on the table after their meal in Babylon - split skin, fleshy hearts. Those went down sweet and warm.

***

_Bethlehem - a very unassuming stable_

“What are you doing here?”

He starts, the hair at the back of his neck rising instantly, suppressing a hiss. He knows the voice, though. Of course he knows the voice. It’s been with him, intersecting, for years and decades and centuries now.

“Oh, here to tempt a couple of shepherds. Inspire them with some romantic thoughts about their flocks. Oh, and the girl - had to come see when we heard there was a strumpet claiming to be a maid untouched hereabouts -”

“You’re vile, Crowley.”

Crowley turns back to gaze back to the stable where a curious crowd of onlookers has gathered. He feels, more than sees, the angel sink down onto the ground beside him. The soft thigh bumps against his own, and Crowley grits his teeth against the sting that he has come to associate with Aziraphale’s touch. Divinity, or some such bollocks. “Part of the job, angel.”

“Quite.”

“So, is it true, then?” Crowley jerks his chin at the scene unfolding before him. “Son of God and all that?”

The slightest hesitation, and then a rounded shoulder shrugs. At some point in the last few hundred years, they’ve decided to start trusting one another. With things like this, anyway. Things that will get out eventually. 

“It’s true.” Aziraphale’s eyes are far away. “Poor boy.”

Crowley waits but Aziraphale doesn’t elaborate. Now it’s Crowley’s turn to shrug. He’ll find out soon enough, anyway. Human lives are so fleeting. They certainly don’t live as long as they used to. It’s made it hard to get attached. Even though you’re not supposed to get attached. In a rush, Crowley wonders if Aziraphale ever feels that way too. 

“Your side’s work?” The red eyebrows arch upwards to the bleeding star hanging in the sky.

“Yes. A falling star.”

Crowley is silent for a minute. “I made those, you know. Helped, anyway.”

“Made what?” He looks over at Crowley, whose distinctive yellow eyes are shaded. Despite the brightness of the day, the red comet overhead makes the day an unnatural shade of pink, the color of a newborn babe. The wrinkled soles of feet, the soft curling shell of an ear. 

“The stars,” he says, a little hitch in his normally lazy, irreverent voice. He is trying to be casual. And it hits Aziraphale suddenly, that maybe Crowley misses the stars. Heaven. The whole lot.

_He made the stars. And the Hanging Gardens. What other gardens has he tended? He knew just which Apple to give to Eve. Because it was his Apple, wasn’t it? It was his tree. He watched it grow._

“Crowley -” he starts. He doesn’t know what to say. He didn’t know that any of the Fallen could even remember Before. How cruel, he thinks for a moment, before remembering it’s not his place.

But really, how cruel.

“We’re going to have one too, you know.” Crowley volunteers. Seems only fair. “Not now. I don’t know when. In a while.”

“A what?”

“A son.” He gestures vaguely to where the young mother, no more than a girl really, cradles the sated, milk-drunk baby against her brown breast. “Like yours. Only...ours. You know.”

“I do know.” He pauses. “The Great Plan.”

Crowley makes a noise between a tut and a hiss. As though he didn’t think much of the Plan, Great or not. And Aziraphale can’t say he blames him, really. 

***  
_London - Pudding Lane_

“What are you doing, you stupid git?” The rough, familiar voice breaks his muttered prayers against the hellfire - futilely, as it happens, and doing a blessed nothing against the flames crawl up his legs. He opens his eyes and there’s Crowley, glaring down at him balefully. He wants to laugh in relief. But Crowley doesn’t look like he’s in a laughing mood. 

“Crowley.” His voice breaks in relief, just a bit. Surely not enough for the demon to notice. He has grown so fond of this body. And the paperwork is dreadful. 

“Were you expecting the Heavenly Host?” The golden eyes roll behind the dark-lensed glasses that he has taken to wearing. “Come on, get up.”

“I’m stuck.” He winces, wriggles. “Hellfire. You know.”

Crowley groans. He snaps his fingers and extinguishes the blazing beam pinning Aziraphale to the earth floor of the cottage and heaves the singed angel to his feet. Wobbling, Aziraphale grips Crowley’s arm gratefully as the lanky demon transports the two of them to safety. They remain clinging to each other well after the demon has magicked the flames burning Aziraphale’s clothing. 

“It’s not mine, if you’re wondering,” Crowley breaks the silence, voice tight. “Hastur. Or Ligur. One of the bastards, anyway. What in Hell’s - Heaven’s - bless it, what were you doing in there?”

“Well, I was trying to stop it, obviously.” Aziraphale’s voice is harsher than strictly necessary. “They’re going to blame the Catholics, and then we’re going to have problems. More problems than already, anyway.” He coughs, somewhat pitifully, and the two turn together to watch as the blaze spreads from the potter’s shop to the flimsy wooden buildings crowded closely on either side.

“And it’s been such a dry summer,” Aziraphale sighs. “Oh, dear.”

“You’d better be more careful,” Crowley admonishes. “You know it takes ages to get a new body assigned once you’ve been discorporated. Did last time, anyway.”

“I know, dear.” He hesitates. “Crowley, I - thank you.”

“Don’t.” His voice is tight. Ragged. Centuries around humans, and it hits Aziraphale suddenly. _It’s fear_. “Aziraphale. Don’t.” _But it can’t be fear for me,_ he thinks. Can it?

Can it?

They stand together in silence, leaning slightly against each other, watching the flames spread. And though Aziraphale has stopped trembling, his fingers and Crowley’s remain intertwined. The spark between them is no more than a tickle, compared with the searing pain of hellfire. So Aziraphale holds on.

***  
_London - St. Dunstan In the East_

How does he keep finding him?

His hand trembles on the handle of the bag, tingling a bit where Crowley’s fingers had grazed his own. 

This is hardly the first time. Back in the old days, of course - well, it had been a smaller world then. But even since things picked up speed a bit - The Dark Ages, of course, and then Henry VIII’s court, when he got involved with that Boleyn fellow. Humoring him with the plays, even though he thought Will was a - well - a twat, he had called him. Many times. And Kit he’d called worse.

The second Plague. The Great Fire. The Trenches. Aziraphale always there, helping - trying to, anyway, and then it seemed like Crowley would inevitably arrive, sauntering towards him - to help him. And shouldn’t Crowley have been there first? Starting whatever conflagration that Aziraphale was attempting to thwart? Not lending a hand to his sworn enemy?

 _But how long has it been,_ he thinks wryly, _since we’ve been enemies, really_. Millennia. Not a question. Just a fact.

And now here, after the bomb fell. And the Nazis dispatched, neatly and without guilt, Aziraphale not lifting a finger. And he’s safe. And the books are safe. And he knows, instinctively, the humans crouching in quaking buildings around them - those people are safe, too. Because of Crowley.

Crowley, leaning against his shoulder while watching Christ suffocate up on that terrible cross. Crowley, teasing him in Paris for his vanity and then taking him for crepes. Crowley, keeping him company in silence, walking over the trenches in France, smoke rising from the ground. 

Not another angel. Not even a human. Crowley. From the first day after man left the Garden. By his side. Looking out for him. Never coming too close, but coming all the same.

He shuts his eyes briefly. And then he hears him shout again, dimly, from outside the church. “Oi! Angel! Are you coming?”

“Oh, no,” he whimpers. And, damn it. It sounds more like a prayer. “Oh, that is so inconvenient.” 

After nearly 6000 years, he knows by now when he is in love. But unfortunately, it seems like this one has snuck up on him. 

***  
_London - outside a Mayfair nightclub_

His fingers are caught in the fabric of his trousers, twisting like a drowning man clutching at straws. Face mottled odd colors in the neon lights. He can’t meet the angel’s eyes. He can’t bear to see what the answer will be.

“I’ll take you. Anywhere you want to go.”

Silence. And then, worse.

“You go too fast for me, Crowley.”

Ridiculously, and infuriatingly, all he can think about is the low and honeyed words pouring out of Aziraphale’s throat, that night with David. Words of praise. Soft, golden ambrosia. 

Bawdy jokes in a thatched tavern. Grandiose ideas from pompous, swaggering idiots. That twat Kit Marlowe with his lingering hands and his greasy smile. 

And then at that poncy club where Crowley - decidedly lurking - saw more smiles and heard more whispers than he wants to remember. _Bloody Oscar Wilde._

 _Anyone. Everyone,_ he thinks. _I see. Anyone but me._

Crowley’s throat feels like it’s closing. He can’t breathe. Luckily, he doesn’t need to. 

It feels like he is going to die. Is that what this feels like? He’s never felt this before. Heat flushes up his neck, making him woozy, fingers digging into his thighs and he’s grateful for the dark interior of the Bentley. Desperately, he tries to think of something flippant to say. He comes up short. He can’t pretend. Not about this. Not about Aziraphale.

_Anywhere you want to go. Just not to me._

After Aziraphale leaves the car, Crowley is surprised to find he has not, in fact, discorporated out of sheer humiliation. And who’s ever heard of an embarrassed demon? What a disgrace.

But he’s never been a very good - er, bad - demon.

He knows he’ll keep trying. He hates that he knows. But he knows anyway. Because it hasn’t taken nearly 6000 years for Crowley to realize that the angel who gave away his flaming sword because of a soft heart was worth knowing. They watched the humans walk out of the Garden together. And that means something. Surely. 

He’s loved Aziraphale since the angel admitted to his soft heart. Because Aziraphale was smart enough - stupid enough - not to question. He just did the right thing. In Crowley’s book, he’s the origin of loving acts. He’s good, plain and simple. And he makes Crowley want to know him. Orbit him. Be a part of it with him.

Crowley wipes his hands on his trousers, bows his head, and starts the car.

***

_London - St. James’s Park_

“We could run away together. Alpha Centauri. Awfully nice this time of year.” 

_I know the stars._

Aziraphale wants to. But he can't. 

***  
_London - SoHo, outside an angel's bookshop_

“When I’m off in the stars, I won’t even think about you!” 

If there’s a tint of hysteria to the words, they’re lost in the thick, crushing grief radiating off the demon in waves.

After Crowley has gone, Aziraphale exhales. He hasn’t been punched in the gut for several hundred years but this feeling is the same, or worse. All the air in his lungs: gone. He bites his lip hard to stop himself from calling out the name he’s said more times than his own.

 _The stars. That he had made. That he would share with me._

“Stupid,” he mutters to himself. Him, or Crowley - he isn’t sure who he means. Neither. Both.

He’s not worth it, a well-meaning human says, passing by and seeing the stunned look on Aziraphale’s face as Crowley had roared away in the Bentley.

Isn't he, though? Just isn't he?

His breath, when he finally pulls it back into his lungs, comes as a sob.

***

_Tadfield - a bus stop_

“You can stay the night at mine. If you like.”

“I don’t think my side would like that very much.”

Crowley’s eyes, when he looks at him, are impossibly soft.

"You don't have a side anymore. Neither of us do. We're on our own side."

The bus pulls up. It’s not going to London, but it will drive there anyway. Crowley stands, dusts himself off - old habits, old snakey habits - and mounts the steps. He sits halfway back, staring out the window. He half expects Aziraphale will stay on the bench in the crisp night.

A familiar weight drops into the seat beside him. He closes his eyes, inhales deeply, lets out a long and shaky breath. A smooth, warm hand closes over his. An achingly familiar spark runs up his arm, settles into where his heart would be. If he were mortal. If he had a heart.

And doesn’t he?

He leans into Aziraphale, his presence as solid as gravity. The angel’s cheek rests against Crowley’s temple. He shivers slightly and doesn’t know how he will bear the trip back to London.

The bus begins to accelerate, and Aziraphale lifts his face to look at Crowley disapprovingly. Fussy, prissy, predictable. Unchanging. A constant light for Crowley to revolve around. He closes his eyes, unable to look at him for a moment. It’s all too much, really. He needs a drink.

He opens them again when Aziraphale speaks. Through his sunglasses he meets the angel’s gaze. Hazy, ocean-deep eyes, color shifting in the dim light. “My dear? Are you here with me?”

Crowley leans in then, closes the space between them. Because there’s no need for the space anymore, is there? Not really. Their foreheads rest together. Aziraphale’s skin is nearly unbearably warm, as if a halo still burns there. Eyelashes brush against each other, a whisper in a long-dead language. Crowley breathes in all the crisp angelic scent of him, a smell he’d know anywhere, a smell he can’t describe. He could kiss him, if he dared. God - Satan - someone - knows he wants to.

He’s shaking by the time the bus drops them off right in front of his flat. Aziraphale feels Crowley trembling and leans in, resting his forehead against the taller man’s back as Crowley enters the code for the penthouse. “Me too,” he whispers. “Oh, my dear, me too.”

They nearly fall out of the elevator, the snake-green house plants quivering at the sudden crash and Crowley’s curse. There’s a laugh, a hitching breathy laugh, that brings him up short. Because he can’t stand to be ridiculous in Aziraphale’s eyes. Not now. Not after so long, and so many false starts.

“I have to tell you,” he says, and it comes out like he’s been running for miles. _Fuck fuck fuck. Get it together_. “I - need to tell you.” He opens his mouth, then closes it, a fish gasping for breath. Aziraphale stops laughing, but can’t stop smiling. 

Crowley’s expression flickers. He closes his eyes behind the sunglasses. He seems to draw himself up straighter, taller, more angular than ever. “I don’t know why you’ve hung about with me for so long. I don’t. I mean - you’re - you’re wonderful and I - well, I - I couldn’t make it as an angel. I Fell. I’m not supposed to feel anything but lust and avarice and sloth and sin. And I don’t. I don’t feel that with you, Aziraphale. I can remember the stars with you. It’s so blurry before, but with you I -” he falters. 

“Crowley.”

“No, I - let me finish. I don’t pray, obviously. But I talk to Her, sometimes. Old habits.” He swallows, words like blood in his throat, threatening to choke him, struggling against centuries of denials and subversions and changing the subject. “And I - I begged her. Let me keep working with him. You know, to thwart. And to tempt. The Arrangement. I begged her, let me keep - let me keep Aziraphale,” he finishes softly. His very name, sacred. “I haven’t gotten to keep anything good in 6000 years. I’ve lost everything I’ve been allowed to make. The Garden. The stars.” He gulps air greedily, pushing out the words before he can stop himself. His voice is ragged and pulses with longing. “But She’s let me keep you. And I can’t lose you so if this - if tonight - if it’s too fast,” he finishes, voice dropping, near to breaking. “If it’s too fast - please say so. I can’t be on Earth or anywhere else without you.”

Aziraphale takes off Crowley’s glasses, sets them aside. It’s as if someone is looking at him for the very first time.

His wretched, searing vulnerability makes Aziraphale want to weep and laugh all at once. Because this is not a demon at all. 

He’s something more. 

Aziraphale doesn’t say anything and Crowley is about to cry out for him to answer, say anything, but instead Aziraphale kisses him. 

The kiss, when it comes, is not what he’s imagined over the years, curled up in his own fist or pressed up against the bodies of fragile, flimsy humans. It’s hesitant. Soft. And it’s so brief. While it lasts - it feels like champagne tastes. The spark slips down his throat, burning. It settles in his stomach and seems to spread throughout his body, rimming the edge of each corporeal cell. A bright light seeps through his eyelids and it should hurt, it should _burn_ , all this divinity. It should burn a demon to dust. But it doesn’t. It just feels like Aziraphale. Constant, steady light. Laughing, disapproving, seeking, calling to him across the years. The smile on his lips when their eyes meet across the centuries.

They push through the flat, entangled, landing on a sofa. Or a bed. Neither knows, neither cares. The body of the angel, bearing him down, it should be soft but it’s so strong underneath his flesh. Crowley’s long fingers tangle in his angel’s blonde hair. And for once, Crowley has the grace to trust. The first time he’s felt grace in thousands and thousands of years.

Just Aziraphale, kneeling between his thighs. Aziraphale’s hot, urgent tongue. The weight of his chest pressing against Crowley’s, solid and physical and Earthly.

“How long?” Crowley asks suddenly, panting, as Aziraphale drags his mouth up to crush his lips to the demon’s. “How long?” His voice is demanding. Envy, it’s in his nature. 

“Oh, for longer than I’ve known,” Aziraphale replies. His strong arms lift Crowley against him, bending to kiss his neck. He brings the demon’s hand to his mouth, nipping the tender web between the thumb and forefinger. Crowley hisses as Aziraphale enters him without preamble, a sob and a prayer and a promise. A blaze of light flashes across the sky. Rain begins to fall. “I should have known sooner. I was afraid. Isn’t that foolish? An angel, afraid? But I was.” His mouth finds Crowley’s. “I’m not afraid anymore.”

“Not afraid,” Crowley echoes. A few hoarse gasps, and then: “Since the beginning. At the Wall. You gave her your sword. Since that minute, angel.” 

“Darling boy,” Aziraphale murmurs. They move together in the dark, the air thick with devotion, and when Crowley cries out Aziraphale is with him. 

Later, when they can think a bit more clearly, Crowley is surprised to find that Aziraphale, hesitant for so long, has made up his mind. He has chosen sides. Theirs.

After, they sit on the balcony, watching the night, wrapped around each other. The rain clouds have moved away. Above them glitter the stars which Crowley can dimly remember placing. Under the night sky where they’ve sat so many times together, this time: planning comes easily. Aziraphale reads the prophecy out loud. They will face it head on, together. They will stand together. There’s no life for him, without Aziraphale. So of course it will work. They’ve saved the world. Surely, now, they’ll be able to enjoy it.

Because after all their slow orbiting of one another - after falling together like a comet to the Earth - Aziraphale is the one thing the Almighty, ineffably, has granted Crowley to keep. And surely, if She is all-knowing, then She’s known since Eden, too. And how much more must there be to see, and to grow? How many more distant stars?

After feeling cast out for so long, of laying on his back and looking up to Heaven and feeling keenly its loss - Crowley knows that what he was missing was here, on Earth, all along. With him. And Aziraphale knows it too. And isn’t that a miracle?

When Aziraphale kisses his neck, and chinks their teacups together in a toast, Crowley whispers in a voice thick with emotion: “To you.”

“To you, my dear.”

_To the world._


End file.
